1. Field Of The Invention:
The present invention relates generally to brackets, and more particularly to brackets for holding instruments in place.
2. Description Of The Related Art
During work and recreation, many people find it necessary to manipulate and have accessible more than one hand-held instrument at a time. For example, most modern homes have one or more of the following entertainment devices: a television, a video tape player-recorder, a stereo sound system, a compact disc player or a laser disc player. All these are now available with wireless remote control units. It is not uncommon to need more than one remote control unit at a time, especially when using interactive devices such as televisions and video tape machines. This often creates a problem because every time the viewer or listener wishes to change the entertainment environment from his or her seat the correct remote control unit, or combination of remote control units, must be located. Each unit being separate, they tend to get misplaced, confused with one another or buried under other items such as newspapers, pizza boxes and the like. Further, once misplaced, a greater risk of damage arises because they are more easily dropped, stepped-on or damaged by liquids.
Modern technology has made many other instruments of similar size available. These are sometimes tailored to use for particular types of analysis such as those becoming known in the medical or automotive arts. Other hand-sized electronic instruments include mathematical calculators, tape recorders, and small radios and televisions. Hand-held electronic dictionaries, thesauri and foreign language translators are also available now. One needs only to speculate as to the possible range of needs that may be met by having two or more of the foregoing instruments close at hand.
Consequently, it appears that there exists a need for a device to bind instruments such as the foregoing together for convenient use. This has recently been achieved electronically in the field of remote control units for entertainment devices, a single master unit being tuned for control of all a user's various entertainment devices. However, this is fairly expensive and usually wasteful of that part of the cost of those entertainment devices with which a remote control is supplied at the time of purchase. Further, in many instances it would neither be practical nor economical to produce novel hybrid electronic instruments to fit one's particular needs.
It is perhaps more reasonable to attempt to bind the desired instruments together in a physical rather than an electronic way. But, simply wrapping tape, rubber bands, wire, string or the like around instruments must allow for free use of all the control buttons; this is therefore impractical in most cases.
To address this problem, at least one device, as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,610,054 to Mailan, suggests binding instruments side-by-side on a planar surface with the aid of mechanically interlocking fabric strips. This is disclosed in combination with a clipboard for a paper pad. However, Malian and the rest of the art fail to provide means for securely binding a plurality of instruments into an integrated array of custom-tailored size having means to prevent accidental disassembly, while retaining the ability to accommodate the further addition or removal of instruments.